


Capital K

by sajere1



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Lesbian Character, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-17 23:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2326265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reason you killed your brother is simple. It goes by the name of Constance Haywood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capital K

Your name is Agent South Dakota, and sometimes, people ask why you killed your brother.

Well. You didn’t _kill_ him – not in the literal sense of the word, and, really, what other sense matters? But you did Kill him, capital-K fucKed him over, down for the count, sent him pacKing (capital K, capital fucK you). And the question doesn’t stop being “why did you kill your brother,” it just happens to be one you can’t answer, on account of being dead or all (and honestly, people don’t really give a shit, they just want to paint their own insecurities onto your greymoral grin).

So here it is, fresh from the grave, served up on a hot platter of cusses and innuendos, because when it comes down to it, the reason you killed your brother was actually pretty simple.

It went by the name of Constance Haywood.

+x+

When you told your father to call you “she,” he gave you a black eye.

It was an accident. You were also an accident, because any time there are twins one of you is a fucking accident and you’ve always gotten the short end of that particular stick, but the black eye was a bigger accident than you were. You think.

North called you “she.” North tenderly applied medicine to your eye and took you on secret trips to the doctors for your broken nose, and told you just because you were identical didn’t make you _identical_ , y’know?

Mom didn’t call you anything because she wasn’t alive enough.

A week before that, you’d made out with a chick whose hair got in your mouth every time you tried to add tongue, and even though you went by she-not-he now, you’d really like to do that again sometime.

+x+

North got the call for Project Freelancer first.

For him, it came in a tightly organized letter – three pages, Times New Roman 12-point font. You were heating up a grilled cheese when he unsealed it and you read it with him over his shoulder. He was faster ( _better_ ), but you still got the first word in. “Sounds like bullshit,” you reported before turning away, eyes riveted instead to the ticking clock until you could melt some butter on your tongue.

“You think so?” he frowned, setting it down on the counter. Like you’d be an expert or something. Always asking your opinion on things you didn’t know about.

“I don’t know. Government project? Sounds sketchy.” You cut the microwave off .5 seconds before it beeps and sniff your cheese with a slight hum. “They send somebody over in person, then they’re legit. Maybe.”

Funnily enough, they did exactly that. A week late, but. Y’know. Thought that counts and all that.

The soldier knocking down the door is for you, though, not him, and you’re so flattered that they physically tracked you down that you accept without a second thought. And. Well.

North has always followed you to wherever you happen to go.

+x+

At your time of death, you hadn’t used North’s real name in five years - not since you both passed basic training.

It was Cameron. Your name was also Cameron, before it was South. There was a mix-up at the hospital. You rolled with it.

Just in case anyone was interested.

+x+

Constance showed up a year after you.

She hadn’t gotten the punk rock haircut then, so she still looked like a plucky little angel, half your height and mindlessly devoted to the cause. She and York – the other rookie, but you never learned what his real name was – latched onto each other when they started out, never detaching long enough to talk to anyone (except briefly flirting with bitch-drenched-in-hair-dye Carolina).

So you didn’t talk. But you existed in the same vicinity for a few months, which you guess was probably the Beginning of the Beginning, or the Beginning of the End, whichever one sounds deeper, whichever one the hipsters would paint on pictures of closed bridges.

North liked closed bridges.

He used to throw bread crumbs outside the edges of them when you were kids. He said that not knowing whether or not ducks were there made him feel better about it – like, it felt somehow more moral to give things up if he didn’t even know whether it helped anyone.

Connie hated them.

So did you.

+x+

Your first conversation with Connie went like this.

You were sitting in the control room. It was five o’clock in the morning and you had Not Nearly Enough coffee, and you hadn’t even bothered putting on pants (boxers and camis area absolutely appropriate sleepwear, fuck you), because it was fucking early and you barely had the presence of mind to choose decent clothes on days where you woke up at noon, so you gave less than half a shit whether York saw your bare shoulders or not. Your hair was still tinged green, then, not purple.

When Connie walked into the room, you spit out your drink and it dribbled all over your shirt and you looked like a moron.

“You got your hair cut,” you said.

But it wasn’t just that. It was also “you are out of your armor, dressed in clothes that would fit somebody at a rave, have lipstick the color of fucking Satan and could probably kill me with a fingernail if I kept staring at you.”

It was also “holy shit I want to fuck you.”

It was also “the last girl I wanted to fuck called me a dude.”

“Do you like it?” she chirped, and it was _five o’clock in the fucking morning what the hell_ , and watching her smirk at you was like opening a book with pure cover and stained pages. Or maybe the better comparison would be opening the case of a really hot porno. You were never particularly poetic. 

“Um,” you said, because you talked the talk but when it came down to it you were about as suave as Jim Carey ad libbing physical humor.

“Thanks,” she said, and it isn’t until about five minutes after staring at her legs as she walks out that you realize she _stole your fucking coffee._

What a bitch.

That, really, was the Beginning of Whatever. Beginning of You. Start of Something New.

Heh. She would’ve liked that joke.

Too bad, really.

+x+

You didn’t give a shit about North growing up.

No, really. You didn’t. He gave a shit about you, but it was like your mind was always disconnected from the things that happened to you – like, when James Cornwell burned a cigarette on your finger when you were fourteen? You didn’t even realize it’d scarred until you walked in the house and North dropped a plate. So there was a physical separation but an emotional one, too.

Like with sex. Emotions during sex? Gross. You lost your virginity against a wall in an alley and it was the hottest thing, like, ever and you wouldn’t have traded it for the fucking world. But when you never got back in contact with the girl you lost it to, you got lots of hurt stares and silent treatments.

Your relationship with North was kind of like that. He would fuck you over (capital K? No, not back then), you wouldn’t give a shit, and he’d feel hurt.

That probably says a lot about you or something.

+x+

The first time you fucked Constance was a lot like that, too.

It was after a spar – that was always when your adrenaline was really pumping, when you were almost in danger but you knew they couldn’t really hurt you, like you were _itching_ for one extreme or the other, for legitimate threat or no threat, and sex with Constance was absolutely 100% threat and you spent a good minute just lying in the afterglow, hair splayed on the pillow.

“You should dye it purple,” Constance said, voice calm, like her voice wasn’t hoarse from begging.

You glanced over at her. That was…not the sort of pillow talk you were used to. “You think?” you asked, voice purposely light, because if this was going to lead to emotions you absolutely weren’t going to touch it.

She nodded, and her expression was so solemn you were afraid she was gonna pull out some serious deep thoughts. But instead she just said, “It’d look better with your armor. Right now the green clashes and it looks gross.”

You blinked. Then you smiled. “Huh. Not a bad idea. Maybe I’ll do it.”

+x+

You didn’t. At least not right away.

Not because you didn’t think it was a great idea, because you would look great if your hair didn’t look like shit all the time, but because as long as it was green Constance has a reason to keep talking to you, and for some reason you sort of liked that.

All the more reason to get it dyed, really.

You finally did it one night when you’re drunk, and the way she looked at you immediately after leads to the sequel to “Sex with Constance: The Movie.”

The Middle of the End?

Who gives a shit.

+x+

“You ever wonder why we’re here?” she asked you once, curled up against your chest.

It was the first time she ever pulled out deep pillow talk, but it wasn’t about “us” or “the future” or whatever, so you took a moment to legitimately consider it. You were pretty sure ‘to help people’ was the morally correct answer and the one you put on all your papers in high school because teachers ate that shit up, but – and you didn’t know when this happened – Connie knew you well enough to see through you, would be able to catch the lie like it was some sort of twisted game.

“To take care of ourselves,” you finally settled on. “Just in case no one else wants to.”

Connie’s immediate response was to tighten her fingers in your shirt and cuddle closer into you, and you didn’t mind one bit.

+x+

You didn’t ever go on official dates, but you guess that was probably okay because you got to wipe foam off her mouth because she only drank hot chocolate with whipped cream like a fucking nerd, and you got to feel her neck quivering beneath your fingers when you rubbed out a particularly tense knot in her back, and you got to brush your eyelashes on her cheek because the feeling of it made her giggle and you loved that, which maybe meant something but fuck it, your own twin didn’t mean anything to you, you were allowed this one girl.

+x+

Then she was gone.

+x+

_“At least us girls will be sticking together, right?”_

You must have sounded like a fucking fool.

Because you weren’t sticking together because _you_ weren’t enough. Because you weren’t Project Freelancer, you weren’t a lifetime of lies packed into a couple of wild years, because you mouthing at her pulse wasn’t Director Leonard L Fucking Church driving a knife through her back (metaphorical, both of them), because you were both put on this earth to take care of yourselves unless someone else wants to and apparently you didn’t fucking want it enough.

And you never told North any of this, because no matter how desperately you wanted to care about him, you couldn’t. Because you wasted all your care on a girl who whistled Yankee Doodle at ungodly hours of the night instead of on the man who raised you not to hate your body.

You guess you’re kind of a bitch because of that.

+x+

So when it came down to “you and me,” you had long since ceased giving a shit – or you thought you had, but you were clearly wrong because North was the last fuck you had to give, the last thing you cared about in the world, and when Meta came calling you died behind a wall and listened to him scream instead of shooting like you fucking should’ve.

And that’s it.

That’s the story. That’s the great big reason that you’re amoral, that you fucKed yourself over (capital K).

That’s why you killed your brother.

And you guess, when it comes down to it, that’s how Connie killed you. But she’s dead, too, so you guess the joke is probably on her, at least a little.

So here’s the moral of the story: don’t love people who are bitches, because they’ll fuck you over every time.

That’s not the lesson you should’ve learned. That’s the lesson everyone who knew you should’ve learned.

You guess that makes you a bitch.

_Good._

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something I wrote when I was having a series of mentally bad days a while back. It's been up on my tumblr for a while unedited and gotten about 2 notes (which is frankly what I feel it deserves), but I figured I might as well slap a couple of edits on and put it up here.
> 
> There's also a couple of companion poems about the story from CT's point of view because, well, it was a _really_ bad few days. But I probably won't post those.


End file.
